A LAND OF PROMISE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 278, 13 August 1918, Page 7

A LAND OF PROMISE

THE REGION OF THE ZAB RIVERS RUINED BY TURKISH MISRULE (By Captain Charles Mansford.) Aliun lveupre, which has been mentioned in recent communiques from Mesopotamia, lies on the Lesser Zab, whoso local name is Majnuu—the Mad River. It is a mime well earned, for these rivers are long, stormy, aud wayward, with many wild gorges whose limestone sides aro lashed with tho fury of half-imprisoned waters rushing for the freedom of southern plains and a distant sea. Tho Euphrates and. Tigris, with their tributaries like silver veinings in an inimciiso leaf of yellow gold, water widely a thirsty land, but first, they have had to fight their way through great mountain barriers. The Greater Zab, a wonderful river, comes twisting like a tormented serpent through ridgo after limelsone ridge down to tho Tigris. Tho Lesser Zab, rising more oast than the Greater, has an easier passage through sandstone instead of lime hills, and through the rolling Kurdish highlands, dotted with- iloclcs and herds and occasional fields of nodding grain. Of the land lying between tho two Zab?, the Arab geographer, lbn Hawkal, centuries ago spoko in •terms of high praise. It was rich, irrigated, and boro abundantly. About the banks of both rivers towns and villages abounded; the whole district, in fact, teemed with human life, invited there by the fertility which irrigation increased. It is no wonder that by the Greater Zab -especially, and near its junction with the Tigris, many a great city rose. Nineveh fell .is much by the shifting of the coarse of the Zab and the Tigris as by the hand of enemies; Al-Hadithath has not even left a few mounds to show where it once stood. Yet ill the anglo between Greater Zab and Tigris there stood a city of beauty indeed, built in a semi-circle, with many temples to tho gods and cool marble or limestono colonnades, with hanging wall gardens and flights of stops to the river's edge, presenting a spectacle of Eastern beauty in a spot where tho river itself, the Greater Zab, was, according to tradition, ono of the four of Paradise. When the great [English poet, Hilton, so'ight for a spot wjiere Satan might fittingly place his foot upon the new-made world, he chose that one whero tho peaks of the Hakkiari mantled in eternal 6nows look down upon tho waters of the Greater Zab and its tributaries

The river lias healing properties. ]ts sulphur poois invited {ho sick, ami where, owing to iron impregnation, tho waters were ruddy, men bathed, seeking miraculous healing. There, tradition tells, after Jerusalem was captured by Jvhosroes in 6U a.d, the conquering Persians boro the 1 True Cross to Queen Shirin, a precious gift inded, for at each resting-place on the way a stream to euro all ills of man gushed from tho ground it touched. Further northwadrs and eastwards wtere tho Greater Zab rises there is plain surrounded by 'Mountains, treeless save for a few poplars. This is the Gawar, the bed of an ancient lake. It has a black, rich, alluvial soil, and after the long winter, when the snow grudgingly melts, snnfclt crops of luscious melons abound, and corn ripens swiftly in the parching summer sun, sis thousand feet above the sea lovel. Through this the Nihila wanders, formed by many lesser streams. On leaving it the river turns'nortli, joins the Alback, and the two make the Greater Zab. In the mountains, the river is fifty yards wide, and its scenery is always wonderful. It passes by a great crevasse, which is one of the most imprcssivo canons in the whole of Asia. Half-way on its course, again, where the-guarding peaks of lioka Bu and Supa Dung face each dther twelve miles apart, and thrust upwards into tho sky for fourteen thousand, feet, nature is in her most splendid mood. So the Greater Zab comes down in glory from mountains crowned with eternal snow, 'through hills covered with olive and vine, down to the }<)ain. Tho desolation of this paradise is yet another «xample of Turkish misrule. The. Kurds liavo been encouraged to attack whole villages and >to reduce the inhabitants to practical slavery. The latter, as occasion has served, have tied, and most fruitful spot? are desolate and tho houses in ruin. With most magnificent scenery, with a naturally rich foil, .with abundant mineral wealth as veil as a huge deposit of coal, with access f'om Mosul, the last 6iicc«ssor of all the g-eat cities, one thing alone is wanted to make this land as prosperous as it v.as cf old —the ordered government which has always been denied to it through the centuries of Turkish sovereignty.